AU 201 Ultimate Power Hints & Tips

[nbarclay]

This thread is for general strategies that can be presented in ways that do not give away significant information about this particular game.


A couple thoughts to start this thread:

(1) When two cattle tiles are available from a starting position, it is often useful to irrigate one and mine the other. That, coupled with a granary and enough luxuries and/or use of the luxury slider to keep a few citizens happy working the right combination of tiles, can create a "settler pump" able to send out a new settler every four turns or a worker every two.

(2) Since we're on a large map, research in the early game will be a little slower than it would be on a standard map.

(3) One possible approach to playing Egypt is to race to Monarchy and try to hold off the GA until you get it. Note that Egypt starts one tech closer to Monarchy than non-religious civs do, and if research goes fast enough and the AIs don't pick up the wrong techs from goodie huts, the techs gained along the way can be valuable trade goods.

Nathan

[badman]

is this supposed to become something like a "perfect game"?
because the starting position is just perfect

btw: so far i always mined both of the cow tiles, thanks for that hint
on the other hand when i have two cow tiles i build another (temporary) city within the capitol's city radius so i can work on both of them all the time (even if both cities are seize 1)
if i have such a good starting position as i got in this game, i usually build 2 temporary settler and units producing cities which i abandon at the end of medieval when all my cities have reached seize 12 and i know that sanitation isn't far away
in those temp cities i only build baracks as the only improvements

[nbarclay]

Originally posted by badman
is this supposed to become something like a "perfect game"?
because the starting position is just perfect

btw: so far i always mined both of the cow tiles, thanks for that hint
on the other hand when i have two cow tiles i build another (temporary) city within the capitol's city radius so i can work on both of them all the time (even if both cities are seize 1)

My granary-enhanced settler pumps keep their population in the 4-6 range because they need the extra production from those extra laborers to build settlers as quickly as the cities grow. That keeps the population high enough that I never leave a bonus food tile unused. (Indeed, the cities could hardly help but grow into that size range becaue at any lower population, they couldn't shed settlers quickly enough to keep up with their growth. On the other hand, I've also built worker pumps that operate at slightly lower population levels than would be needed to have enough production for a settler pump.)

Nathan

[nbarclay]

Originally posted by badman
is this supposed to become something like a "perfect game"?
because the starting position is just perfect

In terms of food, the starting area was actually better than I would have set up on purpose. I kept looking for a map that's shape wouldn't require a lot of tweaking to get the 6/3/3 split I wanted, and this one came very close to being what I wanted. But when I looked for the best starting position on the main continent (so I could assign it to the human player), I got a pleasant surprise, and I wasn't about to delete cattle and wheat from an "Ultimate Power" map. I did add a couple strategic resources and a luxury, though.

Nathan

[badman]

Originally posted by nbarclay


My granary-enhanced settler pumps keep their population in the 4-6 range because they need the extra production from those extra laborers to build settlers as quickly as the cities grow. That keeps the population high enough that I never leave a bonus food tile unused. (Indeed, the cities could hardly help but grow into that size range becaue at any lower population, they couldn't shed settlers quickly enough to keep up with their growth. On the other hand, I've also built worker pumps that operate at slightly lower population levels than would be needed to have enough production for a settler pump.)

Nathan

How do you keep your people happy with seize 6 cities?
because with despotism, i can only support a content seize 3 city, in order to go beyond that i have to search for luxuries or use the luxury slider, something that i hate to do

[DaveMcW]

nbarclay was very generous with luxuries in this game.

[nbarclay]

Originally posted by badman
How do you keep your people happy with seize 6 cities?
because with despotism, i can only support a content seize 3 city, in order to go beyond that i have to search for luxuries or use the luxury slider, something that i hate to do

Personally, I absolutely love the luxury slider. One of the biggest keys to just about any 4x (Explore, Expand, Exploit, Exterminate) game is production capacity. There are just about always more things you want to build than you have production for. The luxury slider lets you build more faster. And if there are river tiles to work, you can even make money on it in the early game because road+riiver brings in two gold and keeping an extra person content only costs one. (Later, as cities become more distant and a lower percentage of cities are along rivers, the financial benefit may go away, but the production benefit is still there.) By the way, under Republic or Democracy with their gold bonuses (or in a Golden Age under any government), using the luxury slider to let cities get bigger is practically always a money-making proposition.

I posted a thread on this, "The Power of the Luxury Slider" or something like that, a few weeks back.

Nathan